


door to door

by Kisatsel



Series: where we are [3]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Canon Era, Domesticity, F/M, Family, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Marriage, canvassing, quasi-feminist Aaron Burr, vaguely ominous foreshadowing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-22
Updated: 2016-09-22
Packaged: 2018-08-16 16:48:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8110033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kisatsel/pseuds/Kisatsel
Summary: Eliza opened the door, and said, “Good morning.” “Good morning, ma’am,” said Aaron Burr. He wore a neat dark blue suit and a tie, and a smile that displayed a perfect row of teeth. “How are you today?”





	

**Author's Note:**

> I can only deal with so many fictional children at once, so Angelica Hamilton and William Steven Hamilton are conveniently absent in this fic.

By silent agreement, Philip’s room was left exactly as it had been, strewn with clothes and books. A ladies handkerchief lay on the dresser, faintly perfumed, with the letters V. H. stitched in the corner: a token from some girl, a sweet promise. Eliza wondered about V. H., her moods, her wishes. Had she loved Philip or had she merely thought to tease him? Eliza loved Philip, her son, her boy, but this girl might have loved the man he almost was. Once a week she swept and dusted the room, careful not to move anything even an inch from its place, and looked at the handkerchief as if it would whisper her its secrets, though it never did. 

Alexander came in the bedroom sometimes to sit on the bed and flick through Philip’s law books. He squinted at the notes written in the margins, and would not leave until she came in and gently shook his shoulders and bade him rise. 

They saw each other differently in the aftermath. Before, Alexander had stared past her, fixated on his great plans, or perhaps his next conquest; now he watched Eliza constantly, eyes following her as she moved around the room. Something in him was crumpled, and she alone could smooth it out little by little, running her hands over his temple and telling him of her day. He told her in halting tones of his mother, stories she'd never heard. Rachel Fawcett, striding through the docks, wearing her Sunday hat on a Wednesday. 

And he held her when she sat and sobbed, took her for walks down little leafy pathways and over streams. It was not wrong of her to love this new housebound husband of hers, stripped by grief of his arrogance, tender by design rather than as an afterthought. Nor was it wrong to lament the bitter exchange that had brought him to her.

 _Oh_ , she thought one day, watching Alexander as he knelt to pray by candlelight. The thought reached her, startling in its clarity: _I would die for him too_. And the next day, turning away in a blinding rage: _take him, what use is he, take him from me and give me back my son_.

Eliza walked often. She stood on the wooden bridge watching sticks and leaves drift along, carried by the eddies of the stream, and had all that she had wished for from her husband, and was terribly alone. 

So life went on. 

It was a gray day like many, spent sitting in a fog of memories as she worked through a pile of clothes to be mended. A knock on the door sounded and Eliza stood, glad for the excuse to lay down her sewing. It was Martha from the church, perhaps, with the pies she had promised to bring over that afternoon. 

Eliza opened the door, and said, “Good morning.” 

“Good morning, ma’am,” said Aaron Burr. He wore a neat dark blue suit and a tie, and a smile that displayed a perfect row of teeth. “How are you today?”

Eliza stared at him. “Mr. Burr.” He was carrying a leather case in one hand, as if expecting to conduct business in her house. What could he want? She had issued no invitation. Alexander loathed the man. 

Burr bowed. “I trust you’re well.” 

“I’m very well, thank you,” Eliza said faintly. “And you?”

“Oh, wonderful.” Burr, planted on her doorstep, looked entirely at ease, as if he would happily stand there for hours if no other occupation presented itself. “I’ve had a busy day, but at the sight of you I feel fully rejuvenated.” 

“And what brings you to the Grange today? If you’re looking for my husband he’s not here.” 

“I’m pleased to hear it,” Burr said. “I'm canvassing for the election, Mrs. Schuyler. I was wondering if you had a moment to discuss my presidential candidacy?” 

“Schuyler Hamilton,” she corrected.

“Of course,” Burr said smoothly. “Mrs Schuyler Hamilton, our great country finds itself at a crucial juncture. I believe it’s important, now more than ever, that the people have a voice.” 

Eliza had never expected to be presented with such a wonderful opportunity to shut the door in Senator Aaron Burr’s face, and she was sorely tempted to do so, but the idea of returning to her sewing and to her uninterrupted thoughts was worse, even, than the company of this shallow and repulsive man who had helped cause her a great deal of unhappiness. 

“Ma’am?”

“What an unexpected pleasure, Mr. Burr.” Eliza held the door open. “Let me take your coat. I’ll show you through to the parlor.”

“I’m honored at your hospitality,” Burr said. His comfortable posture had given way to a look of mild shock as he stood in the hallway. Eliza beckoned. 

Burr sat when instructed, and thanked her when she brought out tea and the remains of a currant cake.

Seated at the parlor table and holding a cup delicately in one hand, he regained much of his composure. “We’ve been conducting a vigorous and unconventional election campaign. I have a veritable army of boys pasting up leaflets; they sleep on the floor of my very own house, so devoted are they! We’ve put down extra mattresses, of course. Theodosia brings them biscuits.” 

“How charming.” Eliza glanced around the parlor. “There are no leaflet boys sleeping here. My elder sons are at school, and little John would much rather play pirates in the garden.” 

“A boy after his father’s heart.”

“Yes.” A memory struck her, and found its way out of her mouth before she could stop to think. “Philip played too, sometimes. Though he was a grown man, he would be anything for their sake. A kraken, or a pirate king.” Eliza frowned at the admission. “My late son. Philip. Perhaps you heard.” 

Burr watched her seriously as she dissembled her cake and took small bites. “I heard he was a brave man,” he said. “A credit to you both.”

“Thank you. It’s a comfort, to know that others are thinking of our family.” 

Burr nodded. “As a politician, I have often emphasized the importance of the personal. Politics exists in the home. Women must have a voice. The government touches all of us.” He reached out with his hands to encompass the room around them. “I discuss this often with my daughter.” It was an impressive performance; meeting him in other circumstances she might have been charmed. 

“More than that,” she said. “Government is built in this home.”

“Of course. You are no ordinary citizens. You must hear some extraordinary stories.” Eliza inclined her head. Burr leaned forward. “Tell me. What impression have you formed personally, if I may ask, of President Adams and Vice President Jefferson? 

Eliza clasped her hands in her lap. “Senator Burr, I’m sure you are aware that I do not possess the right to vote.”

“Yes, of course. But your husband’s views are hardly private, are they. How did it go again?” Burr snapped his fingers elegantly. “Arrogant, anti-charismatic... The cadence was quite something. A shocking indiscretion, but... I think at that moment your husband captured the national sentiment.”

Ah. So they were done with civility. It was almost a relief. Eliza laughed and shook her head. “You’ll die of irrelevance,” she said, looking at him directly. “Hamilton’s words have an oddly prophetic quality at times. For better or for worse.” 

Burr raised his eyebrows, and she thought she saw admiration in the twist of his mouth. 

“And Jefferson.” He chuckled at the look of distaste that she could not keep hidden at the mention of that name. “I think perhaps we feel the same way.” 

“Well.” Eliza set down her cup, still half-full. Burr had taken hardly a sip. “I do believe we’ve discussed all three candidates.”

“So we have.” Burr stood and bowed his head deferentially. “I thank you for the pleasure of your company, and for your generosity in allowing me into your home. I hope you will think carefully about the choice facing us this election.”

“You are very welcome. Let me fetch you your coat.” Eliza didn’t wait for him to stand before going out to the hallway. She was tired again, and her head hurt. She would return to her sewing, which would not attempt to elicit any political views from her, or remind her of past humiliations. 

Burr smiled merrily as he put on his coat and hat. “I hope you will believe me to be sincere when I say that I am truly grateful to your husband. I’ve made my mistakes, as has he, but I foresee a future that brings us closer together, as we were when we first started out as lawyers.”

“It may yet be so,” Eliza said. An empty response. She did not feel better for having let Aaron Burr know that she wished death upon him. Perhaps it would comfort her another day. She wished him luck, closed the door, and pressed her hands to her cheeks and forehead. A curse on all politicians. She reckoned on another six months, at least, before Alexander’s ambitions awoke once more and called him back to public life. In his more optimistic moments he was convinced that it was still not too late to invade Spanish Florida. 

“Men,” Eliza said loudly to the wall clock. It ticked back at her. She went out to the garden to find John. It was a warm spring day, the scent of grass in the air, and sprouts of green were pushing up through the soil of Alexander’s neatly regimented beds. John was sitting atop a tree. 

“My goodness,” she called up to him. “That’s a tall tree.”

“It’s almost the tallest!” he called back down. 

“Can you get down?” It was indeed tall. He was fifteen feet up, on a thin branch, as thin as his arm.

“Yes.” 

“Are you sure?” 

“Yes! I can.” John looked all the way down the trunk and bit his lip. The only one who was still a baby, who still demanded a kiss every night. Eliza imagined him slipping, falling, the crack of bones breaking.

“Come down, then, darling. Show me the way you took.” 

John swung nimbly from the branch, feet kicking, and scampered down the trunk, jumped to the ground and ran into her arms. Eliza knelt on the grass and gathered him to her to inhale the scent of his hair, earth and moss. “Bath,” she said, her voice barely shaking. “Now.”

“No!” 

Eliza marched him into the house. Filling the bath, getting her son scrubbed clean and dry and emptying out the dirty water, bargaining over which trees were to be climbed and which not, making and clearing lunch and teaching John his lessons from the Bible occupied most of her day, so that by the time Alexander came through the door Eliza was sewing peacefully. Another day almost over, her husband returned, her remaining family still intact. 

“Betsey,” he said, when he found her in the parlor, and fetched her a smile. “Fairest of all the flowers. I’ve had a thought. I would like to learn how to make bread. The miracle of yeast. I think it would be soothing.”

She kissed him on the forehead. “Have you much work?” 

“Yes. I’ll do it later.” He waved a hand airily. 

“Alexander,” Eliza said softly. She did not want to spoil his good humor, when he was so grave so often. 

“What is it?” He caught a loose strand of hair and brushed it behind her ear, as he had done when she snuck into the soldiers’ camp to visit him long ago.

“Aaron Burr visited today.” 

“He visited you? Here? Our house?” Alexander looked around him with indignation.

“We drank tea in the parlor,” Eliza said.

He grimaced in sympathy. “That brazen son of a bitch.” Alexander was rarely ever as animated as he was discussing Burr. He jabbed a finger sharply into the air. “He’s a snake. He must be avoided if at all possible, and trodden into dust if caught defenseless.” 

“He wanted to know who had our support in this year’s election,” she told him.

“Does he think us a single entity?” 

“Evidently.” 

“I trust you gave him no such satisfaction.” Alexander kissed her on the lips. He still looked a little surprised, now and again, when she didn't pull away.

“I have none to give to him. He stayed but a minute.“

“Good.”

“Forget Burr.” It felt like a luxury, to indulge Alexander’s whims and to no longer feel weak in doing so. She took his hand and they went through to the kitchen. 

There Eliza took out the yeast that she had resting, and had him pour the water off and stir the yeast into milk and water. They worked in the butter, the eggs and the flour, and then she lit the oven and split the dough into two clumps for them to work side by side. 

“So,” Alexander said, pummelling the dough enthusiastically. “Burr wants my support.” 

“And will he have it?” From the state of the dough beneath his hands, she thought it unlikely. “That’s enough, sweet. You’ll make a loaf like a rock. Now make small rolls out of it.” She tossed flour on the table and began to fashion hers into balls. 

“If he thinks so he’s even more of a fool than I thought.” 

Alexander had been right: they had bread aplenty but this was good, their hands working side by side, the feeling of flour under her fingers. Eliza put the rolls, half of them lumpy and misshapen, into the warming oven to rise.

“Forget him,” she said. “Go and tell our John a story before he goes to sleep. Tell him of a boy who climbed a tree so tall he went into a cloud, and fell to the ground, and made his mother weep over his broken body.”

Alexander turned to look at her, eyebrows climbing towards the ceiling. She laughed and hid her face in his chest. Tears crept up unbidden, hot against her cheeks. He held her tight and stroked her hair as she shook against him. 

“John Church is a boy of eight,” Alexander said gently. “He knows he’ll live forever. But I think I can convince him to leave some trees alone, for his mother’s sake.” 

“Then come back to me,” she said. “And we’ll eat our bread with butter and jam.” 

Alexander kissed her and went. Eliza sat watching the dough turn golden and rise, humming and tracing patterns in the sticky flour as she awaited his return.

**Author's Note:**

> comments are my lifeblood jsyk


End file.
